Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

God, we are encouraged to believe, moves in mysterious ways. None is quite so mysterious as the permission He apparently extends to the Mormon fundamentalists encountered in Three Wives, One Husband (Channel 4). Meet Enoch Foster of Rockland Range, a remote community of committed polygamists in Utah. He’s got 16 nippers – his two wives take turns getting pregnant – and now he’s courting the nanny.

“Sometimes God just throws these curveballs atcha,” mused Enoch, a tall lean man with a long centre-parted forelock. But does He really? The Mormon credo is that polygamy forges a righteous path to heaven’s top table. From this distance it looks like a free ticket to the male holy grail of sex on tap with multiple partners. The men don’t even seem to do much housework.

The women get a raw deal. Marina was the third wife of Abel Morrison and carrying his 12th child. She was clearly very depressed at an arrangement in which she got a 33 per cent of her husband’s time and suffered from a competitive anxiety she couldn’t quell. In this warped code of ethics, she couldn’t kiss Abel till they married. “That’s not appropriate when he has two other wives,” she parroted.

Enoch FosterCredit:
Channel 4

This demoralising peek at polygamy in action afforded the chance to gawp at otherwise ordinary Americans collectively brainwashing themselves. The women seemed aware of the human cost of their demanding beliefs, but then they’d say something mind-bendingly irrational. “I would way rather have a piece of a good man,” reasoned Lilian, “than a whole man who wasn’t as good.”

The men seemed like creeps who got the cream. “Life would be easier with one wife,” explained Abel, “but that’s not what I wanted.” He and Enoch needed to be more rigorously interrogated about their phallocratic credo. How would they feel, say, if their wives wanted another husband?

And then there were the children, whole cute swarms of them. Enoch held a family counsel to discuss his next marriage. The kids voted in favour, apart from a little boy snuggling up to his birth mother. “Do you want Lydia to be your mum?” asked his father. He shyly shook his head. Then stuck up his hand. Gotcha.